The Carmichael Show Team on Season 3 Delay, What’s to Come

Marisa Roffman January 7, 2017, 5:10 pm

David Alan Grier, Tiffany Haddish, Loretta Devine, Jerrod Carmichael, and Amber Stevens West, and Lil Rel Howery of 'The Carmichael Show' — Frank Micelotta/FOX/PictureGroup

LOS ANGELES - JANUARY 6: (L-R) Cast members David Alan Grier, Tiffany Haddish, Loretta Devine, Executive Producer Jerrod Carmichael, and cast members Amber Stevens West, Lil Rel Howery of "The Carmichael Show" during the 20th Century Fox Television Winter TCA Studio Day on the Fox Studio Lot on January 6, 2017 in Los Angeles, California. (Photo by Frank Micelotta/FOX/PictureGroup)

The cast and crew of NBC’s The Carmichael Show are still waiting to get word on when the third season will air—which poses an unusual challenge for a show that often tackles time-sensitive topics. (Previous episodes have focused on the Black Lives Matter protests, Donald Trump and the Bill Cosby scandal.)

“We ideally like to be as tight and close to air, because it shifts and [our episodes are] very much a breathing thing,” series star/executive producer Jerrod Carmichael (Jerrod) told reporters during the show’s Television Critics Association panel. “But we try to find truths that aren’t [solely timely] because…even if we were airing the week after we wrote it, we would still want it to last longer. So we try to find these truths that will sustain longer than anything. So I don’t think it really will affect anything as far as the writing or the thought process behind it.”

As the show continues in a bit of scheduling limbo, an episode currently being finalized deals “with Alzheimer’s and making difficult decisions with regard to when a family member has a disease,” executive producer Danielle Sanchez-Witzel previews. The episode will see the return of Marla Gibbs as Joe’s (David Alan Grier) mother.

An early episode also touches on sexual consent, while others are “dealing with gun violence and mass shootings and kind of how that’s affecting us as a society,” Sanchez—Witzel says. “We are dealing with body image and kind of how we judge each other and what is right and wrong with regards to that—how we perceive women in this country from a body image issue. We are talking about rules within the black community, which I think ends up feeling very universal because we all feel, whatever your community is, that there are certain expectations put on you; and if you don’t live up to them, then you don’t fit in here…and kind of the importance of being an individual within the community.”

The Carmichael Show, NBC